ELCOME to the Darrouzet-Nardi Lab homepage! I am an associate professor at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) in the Biological Sciences department, and part of the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology program (EEB).

Last updated Jan 24, 2025

GRADUATE RESEARCH OPPORTUNITIES: I am done recruiting for Fall 2025 but please reach out to me if you are interested in future opportunities or if you feel you are an exceptionally good fit (e.g., someone with experience working on biocrusts or dryland ecosystem ecology). See here for my prospective student page. I would also be quite interested in working with someone who is interested in putting together a postdoctoral fellowship application to work on our new CrustNet project.

Biocrusts!

ABOUT THE LAB: I am an ecologist and biogeochemist at heart. I'm an ecologist because I enjoy studying all of the complex connections in the living world and I'm a biogeochemist because measuring elemental pools and fluxes is my favorite way to do this. My laboratory's research is focused on investigating plant and soil processes, and a consistent theme is filling in the belowground component of our understanding to complement the often better knowledge of aboveground processes. We use approaches such as isotopic analyses, plant ecophysiological measurements, and a wide array of chemical assays as part of laboratory and field experiments. Many projects also include a global change component such as the effects of invasive species, air pollution, or climate change. Field projects have focused on mountain, desert, and Arctic tundra ecosystems, though since coming to El Paso drylands have been my focus, and in particular biological soil crusts (biocrusts).

Collecting critical zone cores in the pecan orchard

CURRENT WORK: Since I began at UTEP in 2015, we have had two major areas of interest. First, we conducted a National Science Foundation funded project examining the fungal loop in desert ecosystems. We have mainly concluded work on this project and recently the lab has been focused on a second major effort, our collaborative "Dryland Critical Zone" project. In this project, we have been investigating carbon, water, and nutrient cycling in drylands. We have been comparing these cycles in irrigated and unirrigated systems and aiming to create synthetic understanding of organic and inorganic C cycling in particular. Read more about lab projects here. This project has a couple more years, but a third generation of lab projects are also in the works.

MORE INFO: Please check out my Twitter feed, Google Scholar Page, and CV to learn more about my research interests.

Solar eclipse crescents on my shirt!